Day of the Hunters by Isaac Asimov episode #54

Isaac Asimov | January 24, 2023

Day of the Hunters by Isaac Asimov episode #54
Isaac Asimov

DAY OF THE HUNTERS

Episode #54 · Written by Isaac Asimov · Narrated by Scott Miller

A barroom conversation about time travel turns unexpectedly serious when a mysterious man claims he knows what really happened to the dinosaurs. What he reveals is a dark reflection of humanity’s own destiny.

It starts innocently enough: three friends arguing over the atomic age, the future, and wild scientific rumors about time travel. Then a half-drunk stranger interrupts—an ex-scientist, perhaps, or a lunatic—and tells them he’s already been to the Mesozoic Era. What follows is a revelation so unexpected that it silences their laughter and echoes long after the bar lights fade.

The “Professor” insists he saw small, intelligent lizards equipped with energy weapons, hunting dinosaurs for amusement until they exterminated their entire species—then themselves. The others scoff, but Isaac Asimov twists the knife with a question that lands closer to home: what happens when the hunters run out of prey? Humanity’s destructive curiosity, its genius for invention and appetite for dominance, stand mirrored in those vanished reptilian conquerors.

First appearing in Future combined with Science Fiction Stories (1950), “Day of the Hunters” packs big ideas into a few pages—time travel, extinction, and the repeating cycles of intelligence and self-destruction. It’s classic Asimov: clever, efficient, unsettling, and steeped in his fascination with logic pushed to its fatal conclusion. Beneath the easy banter of barroom talk lies an eerie moral about civilization’s end, told with Asimov’s unmistakable wit and precision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) was one of the most prolific and influential writers in the history of science fiction. Born in Petrovichi, Russia, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read before he was five and published his first science-fiction story while still in his teens. By his early twenties he was contributing regularly to Astounding Science Fiction under editor John W. Campbell, helping to define what became known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

A trained biochemist with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Asimov combined scientific precision with a storyteller’s clarity. His early robot stories introduced the famous Three Laws of Robotics, which shaped the world’s understanding of artificial intelligence long before it became reality. His epic Foundation series imagined the rise and fall of galactic empires guided by “psychohistory,” a mathematical prediction of human behavior. Together, his robot and Foundation tales created one of the most ambitious shared universes in literature.

Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books, covering everything from short-story collections and novels to essays, chemistry texts, and histories of the Bible and Shakespeare. He was known for his wit, his clarity of explanation, and his unshakable faith in human reason. Although he rarely ventured into fantasy or horror, his concise speculative stories—like Nightfall, The Last Question, and Everest—revealed his fascination with discovery and the limits of knowledge.

Winner of multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Awards, Asimov remains a cornerstone of modern science fiction. His legacy endures not only in literature but in technology and popular culture, where robots, artificial minds, and rational optimism still bear his unmistakable imprint.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Day of the Hunters by Isaac Asimov — a vintage sci-fi tale of time travel, extinction, and the haunting mirror it holds up to humanity’s future.